
W72 



hfrh- 



V 9 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED 



BEFORE THE SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 



OF THE 



VIRGINIA STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



November 4th, 1858, 



BY 



J. P.HOLCOMBE, Esq. 



Published by unanimous request of the Society. 




RICHMOND: 

Macfarlane & Fergusson. Publishers. 
1858. 



.AJS" ADDEESS, 

ON THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO INSTITUTE SLAVERY— 

Considered as a question of Natural Law, with special reference to African Slavery 
as it exists in the United States. Delivered before the Virginia State Agricultural 
Society, at the Seventh Annual Meeting, at Petersburg, November A-th, 1858. 



By JAMES P. HOLCOMBE, Esq. 



PUBLISHED BY UNANIMOUS REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY. 



Mr. President, and 

Gentlemen of the Agricultural Society : 



It seems to me eminently proper, to con- 
nect with these imposing exhibitions of the 
trophies of your agricultural skill, a dis- 
cussion of the whole bearings and rela- 
tions, jural, moral, social, and economical, 
of that peculiar industrial system to which 
we are so largely indebted for the results 
that have awakened our pride and gratifica- 
tion. No class in the community has so 
many and such large interests gathered up 
in the safety and permanence of that sys- 
tem as the Farmers of the State. The main- 
wheel and spring of your material prosper- 
ity, interwoven with the entire texture of 
your social life, underlying the very founda- 
tions of the public strength and renown, to 
lay upon it any rash hand would put in 
peril whatever you value; the security of 
your property, the peace of your society, 
the well-being — if not the existence of that 
dependent race which Providence has com- 
mitted to your guardianship — the stability 
of your government, the preservation in 
your midst of union, liberty, and civiliza- 
tion. By the introduction of elements of 



such inexpressible magnitude, the politics 
of our country have been invested with the 
grandeur and significance which belong to 
those great struggles upon which depend the 
destinies of nations. The mad outbreaks of 
popular passion, the rapid spread of anai*- 
chical opinions, the mournful decay of an- 
cient patriotism, the wide disruption of 
Christian unity, which have marked the 
progress, and disclosed the power, purpose 
and spirit of this agitation, come home to 
your business and bosoms with impressive 
emphasis of warning and instruction. No 
pause in a strife around which cluster all 
the hopes and fears of freemen, can give 
any earnest of enduring peace, until the 
principles of law and order which cover 
with sustaining sanction all the relations of 
our society, have obtained their rightful as- 
cendency over the reason and conscience of 
the Christian world. 

The most instructive chapters in history 
are those of opinions. The decisive battle- 
fields of the world furnish but vulgar and 
deceptive indices of human progress. Its 



ADDRESS 



true eras are marked by transitions of sen- 
timent and opinion. Those invisible moral 
forces that emanate from the minds of the 
great thinkers of the race, rule the courses 
of history. The recent awakening of our 
Southern mind upon the question of Afri- 
can Slavery, has been followed by a victory 
of peace, which, we trust, will embrace 
within its beneficent influence generations 
and empires yet unborn. Such was the 
strength of anti-slavery feeling within our 
own borders, that scarcely a quarter of 
a century has elapsed since an Act of 
Emancipation was almost consummated, 
under the auspices of our most intelli- 
gent and patriotic citizens ; a measure 
which probably all would now admit bore 
in its womb elements of private distress 
and public calamity, that must have impress- 
ed upon our history, through ages of ex- 
panding desolation, the lines of fire and 
blood. But 

"Whirlwinds fitliest scatter pestilence." 

Nothing less than an extremity of peril 
could have induced a general revision of 
long-standing opinions, intrenched in for- 
midable prejudices, and sanctioned by the 
most venerable authority. Slavery was ex- 
plored, for the first time, with the forward 
and reverted eye of true statesmanship, un- 
der all the lights of history — of social and 
political philosophy — of natural and Divine 
law. Public sentiment rapidly changed its 
face. Every year of controversy has en- 
couraged the advocates of " discountenanc- 
ed truth" by the fresh accessions it has 
brought to their numbers, whilst no deser- 
tions have thinned the enlarging ranks. 
The celebrated declaration of Mr. Jefferson, 
that he knew no attribute of the Almighty 
which would take the side of the master in 
a contest with his slave, is so far from com- 
manding the assent of the intelligent slave- 
holders of this generation, that the justice, 
the humanity, and the policy of the rela- 
tion as it exists with us, has become the 
prevailing conviction of our people. Pub- 
lic honours, and gratitude, are the fitting 
meed of the statesmen, whether living or 
dead, (and amongst them I recall no names 
more eminent than those associated with the 
proudest traditions of this hospitable and 
patriotic city, Leigh, Gholson, and Brown,) 
who threw themselves into this imminent 
and deadly breach, and grappling with an 



uninformed and unreflecting sentiment, de- 
livered the commonwealth, when in the very 
jaws of death, from moral, social and polit- 
ical ruin. Permit me to premise some 
words of explanation as to the meaning and 
extent of the subject upon which I have 
been invited to address this meeting. It 
presents no question of municipal or inter- 
national law. It raises no inquiry as to the 
rightfulness of the means by which slave- 
ry was introduced into this continent, nor 
into the nature of the legal sanctions under 
which it now exists. There can be no 
doubt that slavery, for more than a century 
after it was established in the English colo- 
nies, was in entire harmony with the Com- 
mon Law, as it was expounded by the high- 
est judicial authorities, and with the prin- 
ciples of the Law of Nations, and of Natu- 
ral Law as laid down in the writings of the 
most eminent publicists. At the commence- 
ment of our Revolution men were living 
who remembered the Treaty of Utrecht, by 
which, in the language of Lord Brougham, 
all the glories of Ramillies and Blenheim 
were bartered for a larger share in the lu- 
crative commerce of the slave trade. But 
whatever may be our present opinions upon 
these subjects, the black race now consti- 
tutes an integral part of our community, as 
much so as the white, and the authority of 
the State to adjust their mutual relations 
<an in no manner depend upon the method 
by which either was brought within its ju- 
risdiction. The State in every age must 
provide a constitution and laws, if it does 
not find them in existence, adapted to its 
special wants and circumstances. African ^ 
Slavery in the United States is consistent 
with Natural Law, because if all the bonds 
of public authority were suddenly dissolved, 
and the community called upon to recon- 
struct its social and political system, the re- 
lations of the two races remaining in other 
respects unaltered, it would be our right 
and duty to reduce the negro to subjection^ 
To the phrase Natural Law, I shall attach 
in this discussion the signification in which 
it is generally used, and consider it as sy- 
nonymous with justice ; not that imperfect 
justice which may be discerned by the sav- 
age mind, but those ethical rules, or princi- 
] ilea of right, which, upon the grounds of their 
own fitness and propriety, and irrespective of 
the sanction of Divine authority, commend 
themselves to the most cultivated human rea- 
son. Slavery we may define, so as to embrace 



ADDRESS 



' all the elements that properly belong to it, as 
a condition or relation in which one man 
is charged with the protection and support 
of another, and invested with an abso- 
lute property in his labour, and such a 
degree of authority over his person as may 
be requisite to enforce its enjoyment. It is 
a form of involuntary restraint, extending 
to the personal as well as political liberty of 
the subject. The slave has sometimes, 
as at one period under the Roman ju- 
risprudence, been reduced to a mere chat- 
tel, the power of the master over the per- 
son of the slave being as absolute as his 
property in his labour. This harsh and 
unnatural feature has never deformed the 
relation in any Christian country. In the 
United States the double character of the 
slave, as a moral person and as a subject of 
property, has been universally acknowledg- 
ed, and to a greater or less degree protect- 
ed, both by public sentiment and by the 
law of the land. It furnishes a key to the 
understanding of one of the most celebra- 
ted clauses in our Federal Constitution, as 
all know who are familiar with the lumin- 
ous exposition, given by Mr. Madison in the 
Federalist, of its origin and meaning. In 
our own State, amongst other proofs of its 
recognition, we may point to the privilege 
conferred upon the master of emancipa- 
ting his slave, and to the obligation impos- 
ed upon him of providing for his support 
when old, infirm, or insane ; to the enact- 
ments which punish injuries to the slave, 
whether from a master or stranger, as of- 
fences of the same nature as if inflicted 
upon a white person, and to the construc- 
tion placed by our courts upon the general 
language of criminal statutes, by which the 
slave, as a person, has been embraced with- 
in the range of their protection ; to the reg- 
ulations for the trial of slaves charged with 
the commission of crime, which, whilst 
they exact the responsibilities of moral 
agents, temper the administration of jus- 
tice with mercy, and to the exemption from 
labour on the Lord's Day, an exemption 
which is shown by the provision for the 
Christian slave of a Jewish master, to have 
been established as a security for a right of 
conscience. Indeed, he scarcely labours 
under any personal disability, to which we 
may not find a counterpart, in those which 
attach to those incompetent classes — the 
minor, the lunatic, and the married wo- 
man. 



f The statement of my subject presupposes" 
1 the existence of the State. It thus assumes 
that there are involuntary restraints which 
may be rightfully imposed upon men, for the 
State itself is but the sum and expression of 
innumerable forms of restraint by which the 
lite, libeily, and faculties of individuals are 
placed under the control of an authority in- 
dependent of their volition ? The truth that 
the selfishness of human nature, forces up< >n 
us the necessity of submitting to the disci- 
pline of law, or living in the license of an- 
archy, is too obvious to have required any 
argument in its support, in this presence. 
Until man becomes a law unto himself, soci- 
ety through a political organization must 
supply his want of self-control. Whether it 
may establish such a form of restraint, as 
personal slavery, cannot be determined until 
the principles upon which its authority should 
be exercised, have been settled, and the 
boundaries traced between private right and 
public power. The authority of the State- 
must be commensurate with the objects for 
which it was established. Its function is, 
to reconcile the conflicting rights, and oppos-~ 
ing interests, and jarring passions of indi- 
viduals, so as to secure the general peace and 
progress. It proceeds upon the postulate, 
that society is our state of nature and that 
men by the primary law of their being, are. 
bound to live and perfect themselves in fed- ^ 
lowship with each other. 

As Grod does not ordain contradictory and 
therefore impossible things, men can derive 
no rights from him which are inconsistent 
with the duration and perfection of society. 
The rights of the individual are not such as 
would belong to him, if he stood upon the 
earth like Campbell's imaginary " Last Man," 
amidst unbroken solitude, but such only as 
when balanced with the equal rights of 
other men, may be accorded to each, without 
injury to the rest. The necessities of social 
existence, then, not in the rudeness of the 
savage state, but under those complex and 
refined forms which have been developed by 
Christian civilization, constitute a horizon 
by which the unbounded liberty of nature is 
spanned and circumscribed. ■ 

This is no theory of social absolutism. It 
does not make society the source of our 
rights, which therefore might be conferred 
or withheld at its caprice or discretion, but 
it does regard the just wants of society, as 
the measure and practical expression of 
their extent. It is no reproduction of the 



ADDRESS 



ex ploded error of the anci smen, who 

inverting the natural relations of the parties, 
considered the aggrandizement of the State, 
without reference to the units of which it 
was composed, as the end of social union. 
The State was made for man, and not man 
for the State, but the cooperation of the 
State is y< ssary to the perfection of 

his nature, that Ins interests require the re- 
nunciation of any claim inconsistent with its 
existence, or its value as an agency of civi- 
lization. It invades no province sacred to 
the individual, because the Divine Being 
who has rendered government a necessity, 
has made it a universal blessing, by ordain- 
ing a preestablished harmony between the 
welfare of the individual and the restraints 
which are requisite to the well-being of 

^society. 

Unless there is some fatal flaw in this 
reasoning, men have no rights which cannot 
be reconciled with the possession of a re- 
straining power by the State, large enough 
to embrace every variety of injustice and 
oppression, for which society may furnish 
the occasion or the opportunity. The social 
union brings with it dangers and tempta- 
tions, as well as blessings and pleasures — 
and men cannot fulfil the law and purpose 
of their being, unless the State has author- 
• itv to protect the community from the tu- 
multuous and outbreaking passions of its 
members, and to protect individuals as far 
as it can be accomplished without prejudice 
to the community, from the consequences of 
their own incompetence, improvidence and 
folly. Such arc the natural differences be- 

' tween men in character and capacity, that 
without a sic. idy and judicious effort by the 
State to redress the balance of privilege 
: opportunity which these inequalities 
constantly derange, the rich must grow 
richer, and the poor poorer, until even an- 
archy would be a relief to the masses, from 
the suffering and oppression of society. 
Owing likewise to this variety of condition, 
and of moral and intellectual endowment, it 
is impossible to prescribe any stereotype 
forms admitting of universal application, 
under which the restraining discipline of 
law should be exercised. The ends of social 
union remain the same through all ages, 
but the means of realizing those ends must 
be adapted to successive stag< s of advance- 
ment, and change with the varying intelli- 
gence and virtue of individuals, and classes, 
and races, and the local circumstances of 



different countries. The object being su-{ 
preme in importance must cany with it as 
an incident, the right to employ the means 
which may be requisite to its attainment. 
The individual must yield property, liberty, / 
life itself when necessary to preserve the ' 
life, as it were, of the collective humanity. 
To these principles, every enlightened gov- 
ernment in the world, conforms its practice, 
protecting men not only from each other, 
but from themselves, graduating its restraints 
according to the character of the subject, 
and multiplying them with the increase of 
society in wealth, population and refinement. 
We cannot look into English or American 
jurisprudence without discovering innume- 
rable forms of restraint upon rights of per- 
sons as well as rights of property, as in that 
absolute subordination of all personal rights 
to the general welfare, which lies at . the 
foundation of the law for the public defence, 
the law to punish crimes, and the law to 
suppress vagrancy ; or in those qualified re- 
straints by which the administration of jus- 
tice between individuals, has been some- 
times enforced, as in imprisonment for debt; 
or in that partial and temporary subjection 
of one person to the control of another, 
either for the benefit of the former, or upon 
grounds of public policy, presented in the 
law of parent and child, guardian and ward, 
master and apprentice, lunatic and commit- 
tee, husband and wife, officer and soldiers 
of the army, captain and mariners of the 
ship. Whether we proceed in search of a 
general principle, which may ascertain the 
extent of the public authority by a course 
of inductive reasoning, or by an observation 
of the practice of civilized communities, 
we reach the same conclusions. The State 
must possess the power of imposing any re- 
straint without regard to its form, which 
can be shown by an enlarged view of social 
expediency, or upon an indulgent considera- 
tion for human infirmity, to be beneficial to 
its subject, or necessary to the general well-/ 

In the legislation of Congress for the In- 
dian tribes within our territory, and in that 
of great Britain for the alien and dependent 
nations under her jurisdiction, we see how 
the public authority, as flexible as compre- 
hensive in its grasp, accommodates itself to 
the weakness and infirmity of races, as well as 
of individuals. Upon what principles is the 
British government administered in the East? 
In 1833, on the application of the East In- 



ADDRESS 



dia Company for a renewal of its charter, they 
were explained and defended by Macaulay 
in a speech which would have delighted 
Burke, as much by its practical wisdom, as 
its glittering rhetoric. An immense society 
was placed under the almost despotic rule 
of a few strangers. No securities were pro- 
vided for liberty or property, which an Eng- 
lishman would have valued. This system of 
servitude was vindicated, not on the grounds 
of abstract propriety, but of its adaptation to 
the wants and circumstances of those upon 
•whom it was imposed. India, it was urged, 
constituted a vast exception to all those gen- 
eral rules of political science which might 
be deduced from the experience of Europe. 
Her population was disqualified by character 
and habit, for the rights and privileges of 
British freemen. In their moral and social 
amelioration, under British rule, was to be 
found the best proof of its justice and policy. 
It was a despotism no doubt, but it was a mild 
and paternal one ; and no form of restraint 
less stringent could be substituted with equal 
advantage to those upon whom it was to 
operate. It has often occurred to me in read- 
ing those fervid declamations upon Southern 
slavery, with which this great orator has in- 
flamed the sensibilities of the British public, 
that his lessons of sober and practical states- 
manship, from which no English ministry 
has ever departed, might be turned with ir- 
resistible recoil upon their author. Was 
American slavery introduced by wrong and 
violence ? India was " stripped of her 
plumed and jewelled turban," by rapine and 
injustice. Are the relations of England to 
India, so anomalous that it would be unsafe 
to accept generalizations drawn from the ex- 
perience of other communities ? History 
might be interrogated in vain, for a parallel 
to the condition of our Southern society. 
Are the Hindoos unfit for liberty ? Not more 
so than the African. Is despotism necessary 
in India, because it is problematical whether 
crime could be repressed or social order 
preserved under more liberal institutions ? 
The danger of license and anarchy would be 
far more imminent, from an emancipation 
of our slaves. If the statesman despairs of 
making brick without straw in the East, can 
he expect to find the problem easier in the 
West? Has the Hindoo improved in arts and 
morals under the beneficent sway of his Brit- 
ish master ? In the transformation of the Af- 
rican savage into the Christian slave, the rel- 
ative advance h^sbeerLimmeasurablv greater. 



The truth is, that the principles which lie 
at the foundation of all political restraint, 
may make it the duty of the State under 
certain circumstances, to establish the rela- 
tion of personal servitude. All forms of 
restraint involve the exercise of power over 
the individual without his consent. All are 
inconsistent with any theory of natural right 
which claims for man, a larger measure of , 
liberty than can be reconciled with the 
peace and progress of the society in which 
he lives. All operate harshly at times upon 
individuals. All are reflections upon human 
nature, are alike wrong in the abstract. Any 
is right in the concrete, when necessary to the 
welfare of the community in which it exists, 
or beneficial to the subject upon whom it is im- 
posed. If society may establish the institution 
of private property, involving restrictions by . 
which the majority of mankind are shut out 
from all access to that great domain which \ 
the author of nature has stocked with the 
means of subsistence for his children, and 
justify a restraint so comprehensive and oner- 
ous, by its tendency to promote civilization ; 
if it may discriminate between classes and 
individuals, and apportion to some a larger 
measure of political liberty than it doc- 
others 5 if it may take away life, liberty or 
property when demanded by the public good : 
if, as in various personal relations, it may 
protect the helpless and incompetent, by 
placing them under a guardianship pro 
tioued in the term and extent of its author- 
ity to the degree and duration of the infirm- 
ity ; why if a commensurate necessity arises, 
and the same great ends are to be accom- 
plished, is its claim to impose upon an inte- 
rior race the degree of personal restraint 
which may be requisite to coerce and direct 
its labour, to be treated as a usurpation ? 
The authority of the State under proper cir- 
cumstances, to establish a system of slavery, 
is one question ; the existence of those cir- 
cumstances, or the expediency of such leg- 
islation is another and entirely distinct ques- 
tion. No doubt a much smaller capacity 
for self-control, and a much lower degree of 
intelligence must concur, to justify personal 
slavery, than would be sufficient to impart 
validity to other forms of subordination. No 
doubt the public authority upon this as upon 
every other subject, may be abused by the ' 
selfish passions and interests of men. But 
once acknowledge the right of society to 
establish a government of pains and penal- 
ties, for *he protection of the individual and 



8 



ADDRESS 



the promotion of the general welfare, then 
unless it can be shown that slavery can in 
no instance lie necessary to the well being 
of the community, or conducive to the hap- 
piness of the subject, (a proposition which 
is inconsistent with the admission of all re- 
spectable British and American abolitionists 
that any plan of emancipation in the South- 
ern States, should be gradual and not imme- 
diate;) once make this fundamental conces- 
sion, and the rightfulness of slavery, like 
that of every other form of restraint, be- 
comes a question of time, place, men and 
circumstances. 

The people of the United States accept- 
ing without much reflection, those exposi- 
tions of human rights embodied in the infi- 
del philosophy of France, and glowing with 
that generous enthusiasm to communicate 
the blessings of liberty which is always in- 
spired by its possession, have been disposed 
to look with common aversion upon all forms 
of unequal restraint. Ravished by the di- 
vine airs of their own freedom, they have 
imagined that its strains, like those heard 
by the spirit in Comus, might create a soul 
under the ribs of death. Forgetting the 
ages through whose long night their fathers 
wrestled for this blessing, they have regard- 
ed an equal liberty, as the universal birth- 
right of ' humanity. Hence, as they have 
witnessed nation after nation throwing off 
its old political bondage, and in the first 
transports of emotion, " shedding the grate- 
ful tears of new-born freedom" over the bro- 
ken chains of servitude, they have welcom- 
ed them into the glorious fellowship of re- 
publican States, with plaudit, and sympathy, 
and benediction. But, alas! the crimes 
which have been committed in the name of 
liberty, the social disorder and political con- 
vulsion which have attended its progress, if 
they have not broken the power of its spells 
over the heart, have dispersed the illusions 
of our understanding. What has become 
of France, Italy, Greece, Mexico, Spanish 
America? that stately fleet of freedom, 
which when first launched upon the seas of 
time, with all its bravery on, was "courted 
by every wind that held it play." A part 
has been swallowed up in the gulfs of anar- 
chy and despotism — the rest still float above 
the wave, but with rudder and anchor gone, 
stripped of every bellying sail and steadying 
, they only serve, 

"Like ocean wrecks, to illuminate the storm." 



The melancholy experience of both hem- 
ispheres has compelled all but the projectors 
of revolution to acknowledge, that the forms 
of liberty are valueless without its spirit, and 
that an attempt to outstrip the march of 
Providence, by conferring it on a people un- 
prepared for its enjoyments by habit, tradi- 
tion, or character, is an indescribable folly — 
which instead of establishing peace, order 
and justice, will be more likely to inaugu- 
rate a reign of terror and crime in which 
civilization itself may perish. 

If the justice or fitness of slavery is to be 
determined, like other forms of involuntary 
restraint, not by speculative abstractions, but 
by reference to its adaptation to the wants 
and circumstances of the community in 
which it is established, and especially of the 
people over whom it is imposed, it only re- 
mains that we should apply these principles 
to the question of African Slavery in the 
United States. I shall not defend it as the 
only relation between the races, in which the 
superior can preserve the civilization that 
renders life dear and valuable. This propo- 
sition can indeed be demonstrated by plena- 
ry evidence, and it is sufficient by itself to 
acquit the slaveholder of all guilt in the eye 
of morals. But if the system could be vin- 
dicated upon no higher ground, every gene- 
rous spirit would grieve over the mournful 
necessity which rendered the degradation of 
the black man indispensable to the advance- 
ment of the white. Providence has con- 
demned us to no such cruel and unhappy 
fate. The relation in our society is demand- 
ed by the highest and most enduring inter- 
ests of the slave, as well as the master. It 
exists and must be preserved for the benefit 
of both parties. Duty is indeed the tenure 
of the master's right. Upon him there rests 
a moral obligation to make such provision 
for the comfort of the slave, as after proper 
consideration of the burthens and casualties 
of the service, can be deemed a fair com- 
pensation for his labour; to allow every in- 
nocent gratification compatible with the 
steady, though mild discipline, as necessary 
to the happiness as the value of the slave; 
to furnish the means and facilities for reli- 
gious instruction; and to contribute, as far 
and fast as a proper regard to the public 
safety will permit, to his general elevation 
and improvement. For oppression or injus- 
tice, allow me to say, I have no excuse to 
offer. I am willing to accept the sentiment 
of the heathen philosopher, and to regard a 



ADDRESS. 



man's treatment of his slaves as a test of his 
virtue. And -whenever a slaveholder is 
found who so far forgets the sentiments of 
humanity, the feelings of the gentleman, and 
the principles of the Christian, as to abuse 
the authority which the law gives him over 
his slaves, I trust that a righteous and aveng- 
ing public sentiment will pursue him with 
the scorn and degradation which attend the 
husband or father, who by cruel usage makes 
home intolerable to wife or child. 

Personal and political liberty are both re- 
quisite to develop the highest style of man. 
They furnish the amplest opportunities for 
the exercise of that self-control which is the 
germ and essence of every virtue, and for 
that expansive and ameliorating culture by 
which our whole nature is exalted in the 
scale of being, and clothed with the grace, 
dignity and authority, becoming the lords of 
creation. Whenever the population of a 
State is homogeneous, although slavery may 
perform some important functions in quick- 
ening the otherwise tardy processes of civi- 
lization, it ought to be regarded as a tempo- 
rary and provisional relation. If there are 
no radical differences of physical organiza- 
tion or moral character, the barriers between 
classes are not insurmountable. The discip- 
line of education and liberal institutions, may 
raise the serf to the level of the baron. — 
Against any artificial circumscription seeking 
to arrest that tendency to freedom which is 
the normal state of every society of equals, 
human nature would constantly rise in rebel- 
lion. But where two distinct races are col- 
lected upon the same territory, incapable 
from any cause of fusion or severance, the 
one being as much superior to the other in 
strength and intelligence as the man to the 
child, there the rightful relation between 
them is that of authority upon the one side, 
and subordination in some form, upon the 
other. Equality, personal and political, could 
not be established without inflicting the cli- 
max of injustice upon the superior, and ofj 
cruelty on the inferior race: for if it were 
possible to preserve such an arrangement, it 
would wrest the sceptre of dominion from 
the wisdom and strength of society, and sur- ! 
render it to its weakness and folly. " Of all j 
rights of man," says Carlyle, "the right of | 
the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, 
to be gently and firmly held in the true 
course, is the indispensablest. Nature has 
ordained it from the first. Society struggles 
towards perfection by conforming to and ac- 



complishing it, more and more. If freedom 
have any meaning, it means enjoyment of 
this right, in which all other rights are en- 
joyed. It is a divine right and duty on both 
sides, and the sum of all social duties be- 
tween the two." Under the circumstances 
I have supposed, no intelligent man could 
hesitate, except as to the form of subordina- 
tion : nor has entire equality been ever al- 
lowed in society Avhere the inferior race con- 
stituted an element of any magnitude. 

Personal servitude is generally the harsh- 
est and most objectionable form of restraint, 
exposing its subjects to an abuse of pow- 
er involving greater suffering than any other. 
But this is not an invariable law, even in a 
homogeneous society. The most recent re- 
searches into the condition of the labouring 
classes of Europe, the descendants of the 
emancipated serfs, have satisfied all candid 
inquirers after truth that a large number 
have sunk below the level of their ancient 
slavery, and would be thankful to belong to 
any master who would furnish them with 
food, clothing and shelter. But when we 
are settling the law of a society embracing 
in its bosom distinct and unequal races, the 
problem is complicated by elements wdiich 
create the gravest doubt whether personal 
liberty will prove a blessing or a curse. It 
may become a question between the slavery, 
and the extinction or further deterioration 
of the inferior race. Thus, if it js difficult 
to procure the means of subsistence from 
density of population or other cause, and if 
the inferior race is incapable of sustaining a 
competition with the superior in the indus- 
trial pursuits of life, a condition of free- 
dom which would involve such competition, 
must either terminate in its destruction, or 
consign it to hopeless degradation. If, 
under these circumstances, a system of per- 
sonal servitude gave reasonable assurance 
of preserving the inferior race, and gradu- 
ally imparting to it the amelioration of a 
higher civilization, no Christian statesman 
could mistake the path of duty. Natural 
law, illuminated in its decision by History, 
Philosophy, and Religion, would not only 
clothe the relation with the sanction of jus- 
tice, but lend to it the lustre of mercy. It 
will not, I apprehend, be difficult to show 
that all these conditions apply to African sla- 
very in the United States. Look at the 
races which have been brought face to face 
in unmanageable masses, upon this continent, 
and it is impossible to mistake their relative 



10 



ADDRESS. 



position. The one still filling that humble 
and subordinate place, which as the pictured 
monuments of Egypt attest, it has occupied 
since the dawn of history ; a race which du- 
ring the long-revolving cycles of intervening 
time has founded no empire, built no towered 
city, invented no art, discovered no truth, be- 
queathed no everlasting possession to the fu- 
ture, through law-giver, hero, bard, or bene- 
factor of mankind : a race which, though 
lifted immeasurably above its native barbar- 
ism by the refining influence of Christian servi- 
tude has yet given no signs of living and self- 
sustaining culture. The other, a great com- 
posite race which has incorporated into its bo- 
som all the vital elements of human progress ; 
which, crowned with the traditions of histo- 
ry and bearing in its hands the most precious 
trophies of civilization, still rejoices in the 
overflowing energy, the abounding strength, 
the unconquerable will which have made it 
"the heir of all the ages;" and which with 
aspirations unsatisfied by centuries of toil 
and achievement, still vexes sea and land 
with its busy industry, binds coy nature fas- 
ter in its chains, embellishes life more prodi- 
gally with its arts, kindles a wider inspira- 
tion from the fountain lights of freedom, 
follows knowledge, 

"like a sinking star, 
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought," 

and pushing its unresting columns still 
further into the regions of eldest Night, in 
lands more remote than any over which 
Roman eagles ever flew, " to the farthest 
verge of the green earth," plants the con- 
quering banner of the Cross, 

"Encircling continents and oceans vast, 
In one humanity." 

It is impossible to believe that the supre- 
macy in which the Caucasian has towered 
over the African through all the past can be 
shaken, or that the black man can ever suc- 
cessfully dispute the preeminence with his 
white brother as members of the same com- 
munity, in the arts and business of life. 
Could such races be mated with each other ? 
It is unnecessary to refer to Egypt or Cen- 
tral America, where a mongrel population, 
monumenta veneris nrfundsc, exhibit the de- 
teriorating influence of a similar fusion. If 
there were no broad and indelible dividing 
lines of colour and physical organization to 
keep the black and white races apart, their 



respective traditions, extremes of moral and 
intellectual advancement, and unequal apti- 
tudes, if not capacities for higher civilization, 
separate them by an impassible gulf. That 
feeble remnant of our kindred, who, surround- 
ed by hordes of barbarians, yet linger among 
the deserted seats of West India civilization, 
may forget the dignity of Anglo-Saxon man- 
hood, in the despair and poverty to which 
they have been reduced by British injustice; 
but we " sprung of earth's first blood," and 
" foremost in the files of time," who under 
Providence are masters of our destiny, will 
never permit the generations of American 
history to be bound together by links of 
shame. Is the deportation of the African 
race practicable ? A more extravagant pro- 
ject was never seriously entertained by the 
human understanding. There are economi- 
cal considerations alone, which would render 
it utterly hopeless. The removal of our 
black population would create a gap in the 
industry of the world, which no white imi- 
gration could fill. It would bring over the 
general prosperity of the country a blight 
and ruin, that would dry up all the sources 
of revenue on which the success of the 
measure would depend. Its consequences 
would not terminate with this continent. 
The great wheel which moves the commerce 
and manufactures of the world, would be 
arrested in its revolutions. General bank- 
ruptcy would follow a shock, besides which 
the accumulated financial crises of centuries 
would be unfelt. In the recklessness and 
despair of crime and famine thus induced, 
the ancient landmarks of empire might be 
disturbed, and all existing governments sha- 
ken to their foundation. No favorable in- 
ference can be drawn from immense emi- 
gration, which, like the swell of a mighty 
sea, is pouring upon our shores. It comes 
from regions where population is too dense 
for subsistence and where a vacant space is 
closed as soon as it is opened. It is impelled 
by double influences, neither of which can 
operate to any extent upon the American 
slave, want and wretchedness at home, and all 
material and moral attractions abroad. It is 
composed of men accustomed at least to per- 
sonal freedom, and belonging to races en- 
dowed with far more energy and intelligence 
than the African. It is received into a com- 
munity, whose strength and vitality enable 
it to absorb and assimilate a much larger 
foreign element than any of which history 
has any record. If the black man was 



ADDRESS 



11 



able and willing to return to his native land, 
he must carry with him the habits and feel- 
ings of the slave. Can it be supposed that 
such a living cloud as the annual increase 
of our slaves, could discharge its contents 
into the bosom of any African society, with- 
out blighting in the license of their first 
emancipation from all restraint, whatever 
promise of civilization it might have held 
out. 

If we must accept the permanent resi- 
dence of this race upon our soil, as a provi- 
dential arrangement beyond human control, 
it only remains to adjust the form of its 
subordination. Should it embrace personal, 
as well as political servitude ? Personal 
slavery surrounds the black man with a pro- 
tection and salutary control which his own 
reason and energies are incapable of supply- 
ing, and by converting elements of destruc- 
tion into sources of progress, promotes his 
physical comfort, his intellectual culture, and 
his moral amelioration. Emancipation upon 
the other hand in any form, gradual or im- 
mediate, would either destroy the race 
through a wasting process of poverty, vice, 
and crime, or sink it into an irrecoverable 
deep of savage degradation. What Homer 
has said may be true, that a free man loses 
half his value the day he becomes a slave ; 
but it is quite as true, that the slave who is 
converted into a freeman, is more likely to 
lose the remaining half than to recover what 
is gone. There are no rational grounds upon 
which we could anticipate for our slaves, an 
advancing civilization if they were emanci- 
pated, or upon which we could expect them 
to preserve their contented temper, their 
material comfort, their industrious habits, 
and their general morality. The negro has 
learned much in contact with the white 
man, but he is yet ignorant of that great 
art which is the guardian of all acquisition, 
the art of self-goverment. The superiority 
of the white man in skill, energy, foresight, 
providence, aptitude for improvement, and 
control over the lower appetites and passions, 
would give him a decisive and fatal advan- 
tage in the pitiless competition of life. The 
light which history sheds around this pro- 
blem, is broad and unchanging. Wherever 
unequal races are brought together, unless 
reduced by despotism to an indiscriminate 
servitude, or mingled by a deteriorating and 
demoralizing fusion, the inferior must choose 
between slavery and extinction. Upon these 
principles only can we explain the preserva- 



tion of the Indian inhabitants of Spanish 
America, and the destruction of the aborigi- 
nal races which have crossed the path of 
English colonization. All the lower stages 
of civilization are characterized by an im- 
providence of the future and a predominance 
of the animal nature, which increase the 
force of temptation, and at the same time di- 
minish the power of resistance. Hence it is, 
that when an inferior race, animated by the 
passions of the savage, but destitute of the 
restraining self-control which is developed 
by civilization, is brought in contact with a 
higher form of social existence, where the 
stimulants and facilities for sensual gratifica- 
tion are multiplied, and the consequences of 
excess and improvidence aggravated in fatal- 
ity, it is mown down by a mortality more 
terrific than the widest waste of war. Pri- 
vate charity and the influence of Christian- 
ity upon individuals may retard the opera- 
tion of these causes, but destruction is only 
a question of time. Without a judicious 
husbandry of the surplus proceeds of labour 
in the day of prosperity to meet the demands 
of age, sickness and casualty, poverty alone 
with the disease, suffering and crime that 
attend it, would wear out any labouring pop- 
ulation. The remnant of the Indian tribes 
scattered along the lower banks of the St. 
Lawrence, present an impressive illustration 
of these simple political truths. " They man- 
ifest," says Prof. Bowen, " sufficient indus- 
try when the reward of labour is immediate : 
but surrounded by an abundance of fertile 
and cleared land, where others would grow 
rich, they are rapidly perishing from improv- 
idence alone." 

Even in England, in periods of manufac- 
turing prosperity, when wages are high, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer reckons with 
as much confidence upon the expenditure by 
the operatives of their surplus profits, in 
spirits, tobacco, and other hurtful stimulants, 
as upon the proceeds of the income tax. — 
And if the working class of England, in- 
stead of being constantly recruited from a 
higher order of society, consisted of an in- 
ferior race, the annual losses from intempe- 
rance and improvidence would soon carry it 
off. As population becomes denser, our free 
blacks are destined to exemplify the same 
great law. In the free States, where an en- 
croaching tide of white imigration is driving 
them from one field of industry after another, 
they already stand, as the statistics of popu- 
lation, disease and crime disclose, upon the 



12 



ADDRESS 



narrowest isthmus which can divide life from 
death. When we remember that the de- 
structive agencies which would he let loose 
amongst our slaves, by emancipation, are as 
fatal to morals as to life, and that the natu- 
ral inequality between the races would be 
increased by a constant accession of num- 
bers to the white through emigration, it is 
not extravagant to assert that exterminating 
massacre would involve a swifter, but scarce- 
ly more certain or more cruel death. 

If emancipation took place in a tropical 
region, where climate forbade the competi- 
tion of white labour, and the exuberance of 
nature supplied the means of life without 
the necessity of intelligent and systematic 
industry, there are other causes which would 
remove from the slave every safeguard of 
progress, and render his relapse into barba- 
rism inevitable. Civilization depends upon 
activity, development, progress. It is mea- 
sured by our wants and our work. Without 
indulging in any rash generalizations, we 
may safely affirm, that where animal life can 
be sustained without labour, and an enerva- 
ting climate invites to indolent repose, we 
cannot expect from that class of society 
upon whom in every country the cultivation 
of the soil depends, any industrious emula- 
tion. So powerful is the influence of these 
physical causes over barbarous tribes, that 
under the torrid zone, as we are informed 
by Humboldt, where a beneficent hand has 
profusely scattered the seeds of abundance, 
indolent and improvident man experiences 
periodically a want of subsistence which is 
unfelt in the sterile regions of the North. 
As men increase in virtue and intelligence, 
they become more capable of resisting the 
operation of climate and other natural laws, 
but some form of slavery has been the only 
basis upon which civilization has yet rested 
in any tropical country. If it can be sus- 
tained upon any other, it must be by a race 
endowed with a larger fund of native energy 
than the African, or quickened by the elec- 
tric power of a higher culture than he has 
ever possessed. His moral and physical 
conformation predispose him to indolence. 
Caelum non animum mutant, has been the 
law of his history. Under the Code Rural 
of Hayti, the harshest compulsion has been 
used to subdue the sloth of barbarism, and 
to compel the labour of the free black man, 
but in vain. In the British West Indies, 
since emancipation, no expedients have pro- 
ven effectual to conquer this repugnance to 



exertion. The English historian, Alison, 
who, whatever may be his political senti- 
ments, has no sympathies with slavery, in 
his last volume, thus describes the result of 
the experiment. " But disastrous as the re- 
sults of the change have been to British 
interests both at home and in the West In- 
dies, they are as nothing to those which 
have ensued to the negroes themselves, both 
in their native seats and the Trans-Atlantic 
Colonies. The fatal gift of premature eman- 
cipation has proved as pernicious to a race 
as it always does to an individual : the boy 
of seventeen sent out into the world, has 
continued a boy, and does as other boys do. 
The diminution of the agricultural exported 
produce of the islands to less than a half, 
proves how much their industry has declin- 
ed. The reduction of their consumption 
of British produce and manufactures in a 
similar proportion, tells unequivocally how 
much their means of comfort and enjoyment 
have fallen off. Generally speaking, the 
incipient civilization of the negro has been 
arrested by his emancipation : with the ces- 
sation of forced labour, the habits which 
spring from and compensate it, have disap- 
peared, and savage habits and pleasures have 
resumed their ascendency over the sable 
race. The attempts to instruct and civilize 
them have, for the most part, proved a fail- 
ure ; the dolce far niente equally dear to the 
unlettered savage as to the effeminate Euro- 
pean, has resumed its sway ; and the eman- 
cipated Africans dispersed in the woods, or 
in cabins erected amidst the ruined planta- 
tions, are fast relapsing into the state in 
which their ancestors were when first torn 
from their native seats by the rapacity of a 
Christian avarice." A melancholy confir- 
mation of this statement is furnished by a 
fact which I have learned from a reliable 
private source, that the prevailing crimes of 
this population have changed from petty lar- 
ceny to felonies of the highest grades. But 
if the black race could escape barbarism, or 
defy those destroying elements of society, 
poverty and crime, there is a more compre- 
hensive political induction which establishes 
the justice and expediency of its subjection 
to servitude. If in any community there is 
an inferior race which is condemned by per- 
manent and irresistible causes to occupy the 
condition of a working class, not as indepen- 
dent proprietors of the soil they till, but as 
labourers for hire, then a system of personal 
slavery under which the welfare of the slave 



ADDRESS 



13 



could be connected with the interest of the 
master, would be far preferable to the collec- 
tive servitude of a degraded caste. This 
proposition supposes the existence, not of an 
inferior class simply, but an inferior race — 
which, as such, is condemned by nature to 
wear the livery of servitude in some form — 
which can never be quickened or sustained 
by those animating prospects of wealth, dig- 
nity and power which, in a homogeneous 
community, pour a renovating stream of 
moral health through every vein and artery 
of social life — which must earn a scanty and 
precarious subsistence by a stern, uninter- 
mitting and unequal struggle with selfish 
capital. Can. any skepticism resist the con- 
viction that, under such circumstances, a 
social adjustment which would engage the 
selfish passions of the superior race to pro- 
vide for the comfort of the inferior, must be 
an arrangement of mercy as well as of jus- 
tice ? Upon this question the experience of 
England is full of instruction. The aboli- 
tion of slavery upon the continent of Eu- 
rope gradually converted the original serfs 
into owners of the soil. In England, it ter- 
minated with personal manumission — leav- 
ing the villein to work as a labourer for wa- 
ges, or to farm as a tenant upon lease. 
What has been the effect of this great social 
revolution ? I do not refer to that saturna- 
lia of poverty, misery, vagrancy, and crime 
which immediately followed the disruption 
of the old feudal bonds, and the adjustment 
of the new relations of lord and A T assal, by 
the " cold justice of the laws of political 
economy." What is the present condition 
of the English labourer ? English writers, 
whose fidelity and accuracy are above suspi- 
cion, have almost exhausted the power of 
language in describing his abject wretched- 
ness and squalid misery. They have distri- 
buted their population into the rich, the 
comfortable, the poor, and the perishing. 
That " bold peasantry, their country's pride," 
has almost disappeared. Every improve- 
ment in an industrial process which dimin- 
ishes the amount of human labour, brings 
with it more or less of suffering; to the Ene- 
lish operative. Every scarce harvest, every 
fluctuation in trade, every financial crisis ex- 
poses him to beggary or starvation. In the 
selfish competition between the capitalist and 
workman, says a distinguished christian phi- 
lanthropist, " the capitalist, whether farmer, 
merchant, or manufacturer, plays the game, 
wins all the high stakes, takes the lion's 



share of the profits, and throws all the losses, 
involving pauperism and despair, upon the 
masses." Nothing can be more hopeless 
than the condition of the agricultural labour- 
er. All the life of England, says Bowen in 
his lectures on Political Economy, " is in her 
commercial and manufacturing classes. Out- 
side of the city walls, we are in the middle 
ages again. There are the nobles and the 
serfs, true castes, for nothing short of a mira- 
cle can elevate or depress one who is born a 
member of either." Moral and intellectual 
culture cannot be connected with physical 
destitution and suffering. We are not there- 
fore surprised to learn, from a recent British 
Quarterly, that there is an overwhelming- 
class of outcasts at the bottom of their soci- 
ety whom the present system of popular ed- 
ucation does not reach, who are below the 
influence of religious ordinances, and scarce- 
ly operated upon by any wholesome restraint 
of public opinion. For the relief of this 
wretchedness an immense pauper system has 
grown up, as grinding in its exactions upon 
the rich, as demoralizing in its bounties to 
the poor. But even this frightful evil ap- 
pears insignificant, in comparison with that 
embittered and widening feud between the 
classes of society, which has filled the most, 
sanguine friends of human progress with the 
apprehension, that England's greatest dan- 
ger may spring from the despair of her own 
children, the beggars who gaze in idleness 
and misery at her wealth, the savages who 
stand by the side of her civilization, and the 
heathen who have been nursed in the bosom 
of her Christianity. The intelligent philan- 
thropists of. England, place their whole hope 
of remedy in plans of colonization — plans 
for substituting cooperative associations for 
the system of hired service — plans for in- 
creasing the number of peasant proprietors, 
and thus placing labour on a more indepen- 
dent basis — for educating the working class, 
and for legislation which will facilitate the 
circulation of capital, and the more equal 
distribution of property. But if this evil 
working in the heart in the nation be incu- 
rable, if the helotism of the working classes 
should prove, as it has already been pro- 
nounced, irretrievable, I am fir from advo- 
cating a reduction of the English labourer 
to slavery. There is no radical distinction 
of race, between the labourer and the capi- 
talist. The latter owes his superiority, not 
to nature, but to the vantage ground of op- 
portunity. Nature has implanted a con- 



14 



A D D E E S S 



sciousness of equality, so deeply in the bo-' 
som of the labourer, that personal slavery 
would bring with it a sense of degradation 
he could never endure. Whatever the gen- 
eral destitution and sufferings of his class, 
an undying hope will ever whisper to the 
individual that a happy fortune may raise 
him to comfortable independence, or social 
consideration. The very thought, that from 
his loins may spring some stately figure to 
tread, with dignity the shining eminences of 
life, is able to alleviate many hours of des- 
pondency. But above all, an instinctive 
love of liberty, such as was felt by the Spar- 
tan when he compared it to the sun, the 
most brilliant, and at the same time, the 
most useful object in creation, cherished in 
the Englishman by the traditions of centu- 
ries of struggle in its achievement and de- 
fence, cause him to echo the sentiment of 
his own poet, 

11 Bondage is winter, darkness, death, despair, 
Freedom, the sun, the sea, the mountains and 
the air."' 

I fully subscribe to an opinion which has 
been expressed by an accomplished Southern 
writer, that an attempt to enslave the Eng- 
lish labourer would equal, though it could 
m it exceed in folly, an attempt to liberate 
the American slave — either seriously attemp- 
ted and with sufficient power to oppose the 
natural current of events would over- 
whelm the civilization of the continent in 
which it occurred in anarchy. But if the 
English labourer belonged to a different 
race from his employer ; if they were sepa- 
rated by a moral and intellectual disparity 
such as divides the Southern slave from his 
master : if instead of the sentiments and 
traditions of liberty which would make bon- 
dage worse than death, he had the gentle, 
tractable and submissive temper that adapt 
the African to servitude, who can doubt that 
a slavery which would insure comfort and 
kindness, would improve his condition in all 
its aspects? 

None of the circumstances which prevent 
tin- application of the general proposition we 
have been discussing to the English labour- 
er, extend to the American slave — none of 
the plans which have been suggested for the 
relief of the former would offer any hope of 
amelioration to the latter. No man who 
knows anything of the negro character, 
can for a moment suppose that the land of 



the country, could be distributed between 
them as tenant proprietors. If it was given 
to them to day, their improvidence would 
make it the property of the white man to 
morrow. Indeed, the fact to which Mr. 
Webster called attention, that the products 
of the slave-holding States are destined 
m ainly, not for immediate consumption, 
but for purposes of manufacture and com- 
mercial' exchange, exclude the possibility of 
an extended system of tenant proprietorship, 
and render cultivation and disposal by capi- 
tal upon a large scale indispensable. The 
black man if emancipated must work for 
hire. Would he be better able to hold his 
own against the capitalist than the English 
labourer ? Would not the misery and deg- 
radation of the latter, but faintly foreshadow 
the doom of the emancipated slave? His 
days embittered and shortened by privation; 
cheered by no hope of a brighter future ; 
the burthens of liberty without its privile- 
ges ; the degradation of bondage without its 
compensations ; " the name of freedom gra- 
ven on a heavier chain ;" his root in the 
grave, the liberated negro under the influ- 
ence of moral causes as irresistible as the 
law r s of gravity, would moulder earthward. 
What is there, may I not ask, in the misery 
and desolation of this collective servitude, to 
compensate for the sympathy, kindness, com- 
fort, and protection which so generally solace 
the suffering, and sweeten the toil, and make 
tranquil the slumber, and contented the 
spirits of the slave, whose lot has been cast 
in the sheltering bosom of a Southern home ? 
The approximation to equality in numbers, 
which has been hastily supposed to render 
emancipation safer than in the West Indies, 
would give rise to our greatest danger. It 
will not be long before the unmixed white 
population of the West Indies will be re- 
duced, by the combined influences of emi- 
gration and amalgamation, to a few factors 
in the sea ports. In the United States, not 
only would the exodus of either race, or 
their fusion, be impracticable, but the pride 
of civilization, which now stoops with alac- 
rity to bind up the wounds of the slave, 
would spurn the aspiring contact of the free 
man. The points of sympathy between mas- 
ter and slave may not be as numerous or pow- 
erful as we could desire, but between the white 
and the black man, in any society in which 
they are recognised as equals, and in which 
the latter are sufficiently numerous to create 
apprehension as to the consequences of dis- 



ADDRESS 



15 



trust and aversion, a growing ill-will would 

deepen into irreconcilable animosity. Look 
at the isolation in which, notwithstanding 
their insignificance as a class, the free blacks 
of the North now live. "The negro," says 
De Toequeville, " is free, but he can share 
neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the 
labour, nor the affections, nor the altar, nor 
the tomb of him whose equal he has been 
declared to be. He meets the white man 
upon fair terms, neither in life nor in death." 
What could be expected from a down-trod- 
den race, existing in masses large enough to 
be formidable, in whose bosoms the law it- 
self nourished a sense of injustice by pro- 
claiming an equality which Nature and so- 
ciety alike denied, with passions unrestrain- 
ed by any stake in the public peace, or any 
bonds of attachment to the superior class, 
but that it should seek in some frenzy of 
despair, to shake off its doom of misery and 
degradation ? Would not the atrocities 
which have always distinguished a war of 
races, be perpetrated on a grander and more 
appalling scale than the world has ever yet 
witnessed ? The recollections of hereditary 
feud alone have, in every age, so inflamed 
the angry passions of our nature as to lend 
a deeper gloom even to the horrors of war. 
When the poet describes the master of the 
lyre, as seeking to rouse the martial ardour 
of the Grecian conqueror and his attendant 
nobles, he brings before them the ghosts of 
their Grecian ancestors that were left unbu- 
ried on the plains of Troy, who tossing their 
lighted torches — 

"Point to the Persian abodes. 
And glittering temples of their hostile gods." 

But what would be the ferocity awakened in 
half-savage bosoms, when embittered memo- 
ries of long-descended hate towards a supe- 
rior race, exasperated by the maddening 
pangs of want, impelled them to seek retri-! 
bution for centuries of imaginary wrong? 
Either that precious harvest of civilization 
which has-been slowly ripening under the: 
toils of successive generations of our fath- ' 
ers, and the genial sunshine and refreshing 
showers of centuries of kindly Providence, 
would be gathered by the rude sons of spoil, 
or peace would return after a tragedy of 
crime f:nd sorrow, with whose burthen of 
woe the voice of history would be tremulous 
through long ages of after time. 

The whole reasoning of modern philan- 
thropy upon this subject has been vitiated,' 



by its overlooking those fundamental moral 
differences between the races, which consti- 
tute a far more important element in the po- 
litical arrangements of society, than relative 
intellectual \ ower. It is immaterial how 
these differences have been created. Their 
existence is certain ; and if capable of re- 
moval at all, they are yet likely to endure 
for such an indefinite period, that in the 
consideration of any practical problem, we 
must regard them as permanent. The col- 
lective superiority of a race can no more ex- 
empt it from the obligations of justice and 
mercy, than the personal superiority of an 
individual; but where unequal races are 
compelled to live together, a sober and in- 
telligent estimate of their several aptitudes 
and capacities must form the basis of their 
social and political organization. The intel- 
lectual weakness of the black man is not so 
characteristic, as the moral qualities which 
distinguish him from his white brother. The 
warmest friends of emancipation, amongst 
others the late Dr. Channing. have acknow- 
ledged that the civilization of the African, 
must present a different type from that of 
the Caucasian, and resemble more the de- 
velopment of the East than the West. His 
nature is made up of the gentler elements. 
Docile, affectionate, light-hearted, facile to 
impression, reverential, he is disposed to look 
without for strength and direction. In the 
courage that rises with danger, in the energy 
that would prove a consuming fire to its pos- 
sessor, if it found no object upon which to 
spend its strength, in the proud aspiring 
temper which would render slavery intolera- 
ble, he is far inferior to other races. Hence, 
subordination is as congenial to his moral, 
as a warm latitude is to his physical nature. 
Freedom is not "chartered on his manly 
brow" as on that of the native Indian. Un- 
kindness awakens resentment, but servitude 
alone carries no sense of degradation fatal 
to self-respect. A civilization like our own 
could be developed only by a free people ; 
but under a system of slavery to a superior 
race, which as ameliorated by the charities 
of our religion, the African is capable of 
making indefinite progress. He is not ani- 
mated by that love of liberty which Bacon 
quaintly compared to a spark that ever flieth 
in the face of him who seeketh to trample 
it under foot. The masses of the old world, 
under various forms of slavery, have exhibi- 
ted a standing discontent, and their strug- 
gles for freedom have been the flashes of a 



16 



ADDRESS. 



smothered but deeply hidden fire. The obe- 
dience of the African, unless disturbed by 
some impulse from without, and to which he 
yields only in a vague hope of obtaining re- 
spite from labour, is willing and cheerful. 
De Tocqueville, in his work on the French 
Revolution, points out a difference between 
nations, in what he calls the sublime taste 
for freedom — some seeking it for its material 
blessings only, others for its intrinsic attrac- 
tions; and adds, "that he who seeks free- 1 
dom for anything else than freedom's self, is< 
made to be a slave." How fallacious must ] 
be any political induction which transfers to 
the African that love of personal liberty, 
which wells from the heart of our own race 
in a spring-tide of passionate devotion, the 
winters of despotism could never chill. The 
Providence which appointed the Anglo-Sax- 
on to lead the van of human progress fitted 
him for his mission, by preconfiguring his 
soul to the influences of freedom. This sen- 
timent is indestructible in his nature. It 
would survive the degradation of any form 
or term of bondage. Like the sea shell, 
when torn from its home in the deep, his 
heart, through all the ages of slavery, would 
be vocal with the music of his native liberty. 
The strength of that security against op- 
pression which the Southern slave derives 
from the selfishness of human nature, 
has never been sufficiently appreciated, 
for, in truth, it has existed in connection 
with no other form of servitude. With ex- 
ceptions too slight to deserve remark, in 
Greece and Rome, in the British and Span- 
ish colonies, it was cheaper to buy slaves 
than to raise them, to work them to death, 
than to provide for them in life. Hence in 
Rome, the slaves of the public were better 
cared for than those of the individual. 
With us, the master has a large and imme- 
diate interest, not only in the life, but the 
health, comfort and improvement of his 
slave, for they all add to his value and effi- 
ciency as a labourer. Southern slavery 
must therefore be tried upon its own merits, 
and not by data true or false, collected from 
other forms of servitude. Arithmetic, Gib- 
bon once said, is the natural enemy of rhet- 
oric, and a single statement will suffice to 
discredit all the reasoning, and pour con- 
tempt upon all the declamation which has 
confounded our slavery with that of the 
British West Indies. From the most re- 
liable calculations that can be made, says 
Carey, in his Essay on the Slave Trade, 



it appears that for every African imported 
into the United States, ten are now to be 
found, such has been the wonderful growth 
of population ; for every three imported into 
the British West Indies, only one now ex- 
ists, such has been its frightful decline. 
But however ample this protection may be 
to the slave from the oppression of stran- 
gers, his own passions, it is urged, will lead 
the master to spurn the restraints of inter- 
est. But what security against an abuse of 
power, has human wisdom ever devised 
which is likely to operate with such uniform 
and prevailing force ? As Burke said of 
another social institution, " it makes our 
weakness subservient to our virtue, and 
grafts our benevolence, even upon our ava- 
rice." All the evidence which is accessi- 
ble, the statistics of population, of consump- 
tion as shown both by imports, and the bal- 
ance between production and exports, and 
the testimony of intelligent and candid 
travellers bear witness to its general efficien- 
cy. And it is to be remarked that whilst 
the slave partakes largely and immediately 
of his master's prosperity, the reverses 
which reduce the latter to beggary or star- 
vation, pass almost harmless over his head. 
In other countries the pressure of every 
public calamity falls upon the working 
classes : but with us the slave is placed in a 
great measure beyond their reach, by the 
circumstance that his hire or ownership im- 
port a condition of life in which the means 
of subsistence are enjoyed. From the de- 
moralization of extreme want, so fatal to 
virtue as well as happiness in other lands, he 
is thus always saved. It was the benevolent 
wish of Henry the Fourth, of France, that 
every peasant in his dominions might have a 
fowl in his pot for Sunday. In every age the 
patriot has offered a similar prayer for the 
labouring poor of his country. But it is 
only in the Southern States of our confed- 
eracy, that the sun ever beheld a meal of 
wholesome and abundant food, the daily re- 
ward of the children of toil. 

The relation is so far from having any 
tendency to provoke those angry and resent- 
ful feelings which would excite the master 
to acts of cruelty, that its tendency is di- 
rectly the reverse. 

It was truly said by Legare, that parcere 
subjqetis, was not exclusively a Roman vir- 
tue : that it was a law of the heart, the 
usual attribute of undispuled power; and 
that there were few men who did not feel 



ADDRESS. 



17 



the force of that beautiful and touching 
appeal : " Behold, behold, I am thy ser- 
vant." It was owing to this principle that 
when the dependence of the feudal vassal 
upon his lord was most complete, their mu- 
tual attachment, (as we are assured by Gil- 
bert Stewart and other historians of this 
period,) was strongest, and as the feudal 
tenure decayed, and the law was interposed 
between them, the kindness upon one side 
and the affection and gratitude upon the 
other disappeared. It is not simply the 
consciousness of strength which tends to 
disarm resentment in the bosom of the mas- 
ter. It is the long and intimate association, 
connected with the feelings of interest 
awakened in all but the hardest hearts by 
the cares and responsibilities of guardian- 
ship which makes the slave an object of 
friendly regard, and bring him within that 
circle of kindly sympathies which cluster 
around the domestic hearth. It is a form 
of that generous feeling which bound the 
Highland chieftain to his clan, and which, 
with greater or less force, depending upon 
the virtue of the age, attaches to every re- 
lation of patriarchal authority. According 
to Dr. Arnold, (in his tract on the Social 
Condition of the Operative Classes,) the old 
system of English slavery was far kinder 
than that now existing in England of hired 
service. The affection between the master 
and the villain is shown by the fact that 
villainage " wore out" by voluntary manu- 
mission — a circumstance which never would 
have happened had the relation been one 
simply of profit and loss. Shakspeare in 
his character of old Adam, in " As You 
Like It," has adverted to the more genial 
and kindly elements which distinguished 
this legal service from that for wages. Or- 
lando, in replying to the pressing entreaty 
of the old servant to go with him, and "do 
the service of a younger man in all his 
business and necessities/' says — 

"Oh good old man, how well in thee appears 
The, constant service of the antique world, 
When service sweat for duty — not for meed." 

The mutual good will of distinct classes 
has, in all ages, been dependent upon a well 
defined subordination. This opinion is con- 
firmed by the testimony of one of the most 
eloquent writers of New England, in ref- 
erence to the workings of its social system 
as they fell under his personal observation. 
" I appeal," says Dana in his Essay on Law 



as suited to Man, " to those who remember 
the state of our domestic relations, when 
the old Scriptural terms of master and ser- 
vant were in use. I do not fear contradic- 
tion when I say there was more of mutual 
good will then than now ; more of trust on 
the one side and fidelity on the other ; more 
of protection and kind care, and more of 
gratitude and affectionate respect in return ; 
and because each understood well his place, 
actually more of a certain freedom, tem- 
pered by gentleness and by deference. From 
the very fact that the distinction of classes . 
was more marked, the bond between the 
individuals constituting these two, was 
closer. As a general truth, I verily believe 
that, with the exception of near-blood re- 
lationships, and here and there peculiar 
friendships, the attachment of master and ser- 
vant was closer and more enduring than that 
of almost any other connection in life. The 
young of this day, under a change of for- 
tune, will hardly live to see the eye of an 
old, faithful servant fill at their fall ; nor 
will the old domestic be longer housed and 
warmed by the fireside of his master's 
child, or be followed by him to the grave. 
The blessed sun of those good old days has 
gone down, it may be for ever, and it is 
very cold." It-is through the operation of 
these kindly sentiments, which it awakens 
on both sides, that African slavery recon- 
ciles the antagonism of classes that has 
elsewhere reduced the highest statesman- 
ship to the verge of despair, and becomes 
the great Peace-maker of our society, con- 
verting inequalities, which are sources of 
danger and discord in other lands, into 
pledges of reciprocal service, and bonds of 
mutual and intimate friendship. 

But a vigilant and restraining public 
opinion surrounds our slaves with a cumu- 
lative security. The master is no chartered 
libertine. Custom, the greatest of law- 
givers, places visible metes and bounds 
upon his authority which few are so hardy 
as to transcend. Native humanity and 
Christian principle inscribe their limitations 
upon the living tables of his heart. A 
public sentiment, growing in its strength 
and increasing in its exactions, covers the 
slave with a protecting shield, far less easily 
or frequently broken through, than those 
feeble barriers of law which in our Free 
States, are interposed between the degraded 
and outcast black man, and his white bro- 
ther. Written laws never to be received 



18 



ADDRESS 



as accurate exponents of the rights and 
privileges of a people, are most fallacious 
when appealed to as a standard, by which 
to determine the character of a system of 
slavery; for the wisest and most humane 
must acknowledge that the introduction of 
law may so disturb the harmony and good 
will of any domestic relation, as to breed 
more mischief than it can possibly cure. It 
is not simply in reference to the food, cloth- 
ing, work, holydays, punishments of slaves, 
that public sentiment exercises its super- 
vision and restraint. It looks to the whole 
range of their happiness and improvement. 
It is operating with great force in inducing 
masters to provide more extended facilities 
for their religious instruction. It has to a 
large extent terminated that disruption of 
family ties, which has always constituted the 
most serious obstacle to the improvement of 
the slave, and the severest hardship of his 
lot. A Scotch weaver, William Thompson, 
who travelled through our Southern States 
in 1843, on foot, sustaining himself by 
manual labour, and mixing constantly with 
our slave population, states in a book which 
he published on his return home, that the 
separation of families did not take place 
here to such an extent as amongst the la- 
bouring poor of Scotland. -"We know that 
the evil has been diminishing with every' 
succeeding day, and I trust that public sen- '■ 
timent will not leave this most beneficent , 
work half done. The sanctity and integrity j 
of the family union is the germ of all civ- ! 
ilization. There is nothing in slavery to 
make its violation inevitable. It may re- 
quire some time and sacrifice to accommo- 
date the habits of society to the universal | 
prevalence of a permanent tenure in these 
relations. But through the agency of pub- ' 
lie sentiment alone, acting upon buyer and 
seller, and operating where necessary through 
combinations of benevolent neighbours, the . 
mischief in its entire dimensions lies within 
the grasp of remedy. 

Slavery is charged with fixing a point in ; 
the scale of civilization, beyond which it 
does not permit the labourer to rise. God, 
it is argued, has conferred the capacity and 
imposed the duty of improvement, but man 
forever denies the opportunity. I admit 
that the refining, elevating, and liberalizing 
influences of knowledge can not be impart- 
ed to the slave, in an equal degree with his 
master. But this arises from the fact that 
he is a labourer, not that he is a slave. It 



proceeds from a. combination of circumstan- 
ces which human laws could not alter, and 
which render daily toil the unavoidable por- 
tion of the black man. Civilization is a 
complex result, demanding a multitude of 
special offices and functions, for whose per- 
formance men are fitted, and even reconcil- 
ed by gradations in intelligence and culture. 
However exalting or ennobling might be 
the knowledge of Newton or Herschell, 
God in his providence has denied to the 
larger part of the human family, the oppor- 
tunity of obtaining it. The apparent hard- 
ship of this arrangement disappears when 
we reflect that this life is only a school of 
discipline and probation for another, and 
that a variety of condition involving dis- 
tinct spheres of duty, may be the wisest 
and most merciful provision for each. 
Every age rises to a higher level of general 
intelligence, but the mass of men must be 
satisfied with that prime wisdom, " to know 
that before us lies in daily life." Whilst I 
doubt not that, 

" Through the ages one increasing purpose 

runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the ' 

circuit of the suns," 

yet so long as the Divine Ordinance, the 
poor ye have always with you, remains un- 
repealed — an ordinance without which the 
fruits of industry would be consumed, and 
its accumulations cease, the classes of soci- 
ety must be divided by a broad line of dis- 
parity in intellectual culture. Emancipa- 
tion would not relieve the slave from the 
necessities of daily labour, or furnish the 
leisure for extending mental cultivation. 
There might be individual exceptions ; but 
all legislation must take its rule from the 
general course of human nature, not its ac- 
cidental departures and variations. It is 
emancipation and not servitude, which 
would forever darken and extinguish those 
prospects of amelioration that now lie im- 
aged in the bright perspective of Christian 
hope. The slave will partake more and 
more of the life-giving civilization of the 
master. As it is, his intimate relations with 
the superior race, and the unsystematic in- 
struction he receives in the family, have 
placed him in point of general intelligence 
above a large portion of the white labourers 
of Europe. It appears from the most re- 
cent statistics, that one half the adult pop- 
ulation of England and Wales are unable 



ADDRESS 



19 



to write their names. It was of English 
labourers, not American slaves, that Gray 
wrote those touching lines — 

"But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; 
Chill penury repressed their nohle rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul."' 

But it is supposed that our slaves can 
never be instructed without danger to the 
public safety, as knowledge, like the admis- 
sion of light into a subterranean mine, 
might lead to an explosion. There may be 
circumstances in which the supreme law of 
self-preservation will command us to with- 
hold from the slave the degree of informa- 
tion we would gladly impart. But it is 
never to be forgotten, that this stern and 
inexorable necessity will not be created by 
the system itself. The sin, and the respon- 
sibility of its existence will lie at the door 
of the misjudging philanthropy which has 
rashly and ignorantly interposed to adjust 
relations on whose balance hang great issues 
of liberty and civilization. If the views 
which have been presented are true, the 
more his reason was instructed, the clearer 
would be the slave's perception of the gene- 
ral equity of the arrangement which fixed 
his lot. But if knowledge is to introduce 
him to literature which will confuse his un- 
derstanding by its sophistry, whilst it in- 
flames his passions by its appeals, which 
will exaggerate his rights and magnify his 
wrongs, then mercy to the slave, as well as 
justice to society, require us to protect him 
from the folly and crime into which he 
might be hurried by the madness of moral 
intoxication. We will not throw open our 
gates, that the enemies of peace may sow 
the dragon's teeth of discord, and leave us 
to reap a harvest of confusion and rebel- 
lion — but when they come to plant love 
amongst us, to teach apostolic precepts, as 
elementary morality, and to hold up the 
standard of Holy Scripture as the rule of I 
conduct, and proof of law, we will give 
them hospitable welcome. 

If I have at all comprehended the ele-. 
meats which should enter into the determi- 
nation of this momentous problem of social 
welfare and public authority, the existence 
of African Slavery amongst us, furnishes no 
just occasion for self-reproach; much less, 
for the presumptuous rebuke of our fellow ! 
man. As individuals, we bave cause to 
humble ourselves before God, for the imper-J 



feet discharge of our duties in this, and in 
every other relation of life : but for its 
justice and morality as an element of our 
social polity, we may confidently appeal to 
those future ages, which, when the bedim- 
ming mists of passion and prejudice have 
vanished, will examine it in the pure light 
of truth, and pronounce the final sentence of 
impartial History. Beyond our own borders 
there has been no sober and intelligent 
estimate of its distinctive features; no just 
apprehension of the nature, extent and per- % 
manence of the disparities between the 
races, or of the fatal consequences to the 
slave, of a freedom which would expose him 
to the unchecked selfishness of a superior 
civilization ; no conception approaching to 
the reality of the power which has been 
exerted by a public sentiment, springing 
from Christian principle, and sustained by 
the universal instincts of self-interest, in 
tempering the severity of its restraints, and 
impressing upon it the mild character of a 
patriarchal relation; no rational anticipation 
of the improvement of which the negro 
would be capable under our form of servi- 
tude, if those who now nurse the wild and 
mischievous dream of peaceful emancipa- 
tion, should lend all their energies to the 
maintenance of the only social system under 
which his progressive amelioration appears 
possible. African slavery is no relic of 
barbarism to which we cling from the 
ascendency of semi-civilized tastes, habits, 
and principles; but an adjustment of the 
social and political relations of the races, 
consistent with the purest justice, commen- 
ded by the highest expediency, and sanc- 
tioned by a comprehensive and enlightened 
humanity. It has no doubt been sometimes 
abused by the base and wicked passions of 
our fallen nature to purposes of cruelty and 
wrong ; but where is the school of civiliza- 
tion from which the stern and wholesome 
discipline of suffering has been banished ? 
or the human landscape not saddened by a 
dark-flowing stream of sorrow ? Its history 
when fairly written, will be its ample vindi- 
cation. It has weaned a race of savages 
from superstition and idolatry, imparted to 
them a general knowledge of the precepts 
of the true religion, implanted in their 
bosom sentiments of humanity and princi- 
ples of virtue, developed a taste for the arts ■ 
and enjoyments of civilized life, given an 
unknown dignity and elevation to their type 
of physical, moral and intellectual man, and 



20 



ADDRESS 



for two centuries during which this human- 
izing process has taken place, made for their 
subsistence and comfort, a more bountiful 
provision, than was ever before enjoyed in 
any age or country of the world by a labor- 
ing class. If tried by the test which we 
apply to other institutions, the whole sum of 
its results, there is no agency of civilization 
which has accomplished so much in the 
same time, for the happiness and advance- 
ment of our race. 

I am fully persuaded, Mr. President, that 
the preservation of our peace and union, our 
property and liberty depend upon the tri- 
umph of these opinions over the delusion 
and ignorance which have obscured and 
perplexed the public judgment upon this 
question of slavery. I believe that they 
indicate the only tenable line of argument 
along which we can defend our rights or 
character. So long as men regard all forms 
of slavery as sinful, they will be conducted 
to the conclusion that any aid or comfort to 
them, is likewise sinful, by a logical neces- 
sity, which their passions or interests can 
only resist for a time. The conviction that 
justice is the highest expediency for the 
statesman, the first duty of the Christian, 
and should be supreme law of the State, 
will sooner or later establish its supremacy 
over all combinations of parties and inter- 
ests. So long as our fellow-citizens of the 
North look upon this relation as barbarous 
and corrupting, they must and ought to de- 
sire and seek its extinction, as a great vice 
and crime. Every year will deepen their 
sympathy with the slave, suffering under 
unjust bonds, and inflame their resentful 
indignation towards the master who holds 
his odious property with unrelaxing grasp. 
Mutual self-respect is the only term of 
association upon which either individuals 
or societies can or ought to live together. 
How long could our Union endure, if it was 
to be preserved by submission to a fixed 
policy of injustice, and acquiescence under 
an accumulating burthen of reproach ? We 
are willing to give much for Union. We will 
give territory for it; the broad acres we have 
already surrendered would make an empire. 
We will give blood for it ; we have shed it 
freely upon every field of our country's 
danger and renown. "We will give love 
for it j the confiding, the forgiving, the 
overflowing love of brothers and freemen. 
But much as we value it, we will not pur- 
chase it at the price of liberty or character. 



A union of suspicion, aversion, injustice, in 
which we would be banned not blessed, out- 
lawed not protected, whether by fiction 
under the forms of law or revolution over 
them I care not, has no charms' for me. 
The Union I love, is that which our fathers 
formed ; a Union which, when it took its 
place upon the majestic theatre of history, 
consecrated by the benedictions of patriots 
and freemen, and covered all over with 
images of fame, was a fellowship of equal 
and fraternal States; a Union which was 
established not only as a bond of strength, 
but as a pledge of justice and a sacrament 
of affection ; a Union which was intended, 
like the arch of the heavens, to embrace 
within the span of its beneficent influence 
all interests and sections and to rest oppres- 
sively or unequally upon none ; a Union in 
which the North and the South — " like the 
double-celled heart, at every full stroke," 
beat the pulses of a common liberty and a 
common glory. Mr. Madison has recorded 
a beautiful incident, which occurring as the 
members of the Federal Convention were 
attaching their signatures to the Constitu- 
tion, forms a fitting and significant close to 
its proceedings. Dr. Franklin pointing to 
the painting of a sun which hung behind 
the speaker's chair, and adverting to a diffi- 
culty which is said to exist in discriminating 
between the picture of a rising and a set- 
ting sun, remarked that during the progress 
of their deliberations, he had often looked 
at this painting and been doubtful as to its 
character, but that he now saw clearly that 
it was a rising sun. When the fiincy of 
Franklin gave to the painting its auroral 
hues, she had dipped her pencil in his 
heart. Let but a healing conviction of the 
true character of our system of slavery 
enter into the public sentiment of the 
North ; let it understand that the South is 
seeking to discharge, not simply the obliga- 
tions of justice, but the larger debt of 
Christian humanity towards this degraded 
race ; and that if it has not accomplished 
more, it is because its people, like the work- 
men upon Solomon's temple, have been 
compelled to labour on their social fabric with 
the trowel in one hand, and the sword in 
the other : and the old feelings of mutual 
regard would soon follow a mutual respect 
resting upon immovable foundations; the 
animosities and dissentions of the past 
would be buried in the duties of the 
Present and the Hopes of the Future ; the 



ADDKE SS. 



21 



memories of our great heroic age would 
breathe over us a second spring of patri- 
otism : the comprehensive American senti- 
ment which framed this league of love 
would revive in all its quickening power, in 
the bosoms of our people, spreading undi- 
vided over every portion of our territory, 
and operating unspent through all genera- 
tions! of our history j the Union would be 
so clasped in the North, and in the South, 
to our heart of hearts, that death itself 
could not tear loose the clinging tendrils of 
devotion ; and that emblematic painting in 
which our fathers, with " no form nor feeling 
in their souls, unborrowed from their coun- 
try," greeted with patriot prayer and hope, 
the rising beams of morning, would never 
by any line of lessening light, betoken to the 
eyes of their children a parting radiance. 

I have an abiding faith, in Time, Truth 
and Providence. Let but the educated 



mind of our society be fully awakened to 
the magnitude of its responsibilities, and 
thoroughly instructed in the duties of its 
mission : let it meet the ftilsifications of his- 
tory, and perversions of philosophy, and 
corruptions of religion, in the varied forms 
of wise and temperate discussion ; let it 
catch the spirit of Milton, when he was 
content to lose his sight in writing for the 
defence of the liberties of England, and in- 
spired by yet deeper enthusiasm in a cause 
upon which may depend the liberties and 
civilization of the whole earth, now in com- 
mon peril from a universal licentiousness of 
opinion, unseal all its fountains of wit, elo- 
quence and logic ; and there would soon set 
out from our Southern coast, a great moral 
Gulf Stream, able to penetrate and warm all 
currents of opposing thought — although they 
come in strength and volume of ocean 
tides. 



Note.— This Address nt the time of its delivery had not been entirely committed to writing. 
The author has sometimes found it impossible to recall the exact language which was then em- 
ployed. He has, also, after conference with some members of the Executive Committee of the 
State Agricultural Society, added an occasional statement and illustration, which the limits of 
the oral discourse obliged him to omit- 



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